The Sequester Hits History

Philip White 

When we think about the budget mess in Washington, it’s easy to focus on how it affects what’s now and what’s next. But what’s often overlooked is how budget cuts impact the study of the past. Or, how those cuts might shape history for current and future generations.

Harry S. Truman's farm home in Grandview, Missouri

In the past year, I’ve spent many a Saturday morning at the Harry S. Truman Museum and Library in Independence, Mo., merrily panning for research gold sifting through umpteen boxes and folders. Thankfully the museum and the researcher’s reading room/library will not be closing.

But as of March 24, Truman’s old white-board home in Independence (which he far preferred to the other White House he lived in, dubbing the latter, “the great white jail”) will be closed on national holidays, Sundays and Mondays. The Noland house across the street, which once belonged to Truman’s cousins, is being shuttered for good. And though visitors can still mosey around the grounds of the family farm in Grandview, Missouri, they’ll no longer be able to tour the house.

An Election Apart: Harry Truman and the Last Time an Incumbent President Was Strapped for Cash

Philip White

John Trumbull's 1793 portrait of John Adams

In our hyperbole-infected 24/7, anywhere, anytime news cycle, many reporters have become too quick to judge elections in exaggeration. If you believed stories from the Obama-Romney coverage chapter and verse, you’d think this was “the most negative campaign ever.” Never mind that contest between two chaps by the names of Adams and Jefferson, in which Jefferson’s election managers slammed Adams as a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."  Sniping back, Adams’s team dismissed Jefferson as "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father.”

Depending on where your political sympathies lay, you’d also be resolved that Mitt Romney or president Barack Obama were the two most mendacious candidates of any that have vied for the White House. Hmmm. Because political candidates never stretch or bend the truth to further their arguments, of course. Like the time that Al Smith’s detractors took their anti-Catholicism line into comical territory by circulating a photo of Smith dedicating a new tunnel and claiming he was planning to extend the passageway under the Atlantic to Rome, so he could take direct orders from the Pope if he became president.

But one claim about this year’s Obama-Romney face off that is accurate is that it is the most highly funded election in US history, with more than $6 billion dollars flowing into Democratic and Republican coffers, and then out again to pay for TV ads, logistics, calling campaigns and the rest.

This cash-rich election is the opposite of another that I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time studying lately: The Harry Truman vs. Tom Dewey presidential election of 1948.

Clifford K. Berryman, October 19, 1948

Before we look at the money side, let’s first look at the context of this election. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had been president for 12 years, authored the New Deal, forged the historic wartime alliance with Winston Churchill and become an indelible imprint on the nation’s consciousness, died on April 12, 1945. In his place was a man who had been vice president for just 82 days, and was as unlike Roosevelt as was possible. FDR was born into privilege, had been to the best schools, and mixed in the elite East Coast liberal circles, making his ascension to the presidency seem natural and, in some ways, almost pre-destined. In contrast, Harry Truman had been a soldier, a farmer and a failed haberdasher, had never been to college, and preferred to mix with his old friends from Missouri. Yet, with FDR gone, he was now at the helm of the US, which had become an industrial powerhouse during World War II.

Lessons From the Archives

Philip White

This past weekend, I spent a pleasant morning at the research room of the Harry S. Truman Library & Museum in Independence, Missouri. It was my third trip there, and the first for a new Book Project That Cannot Be Named. In the past couple of years, my research has also taken me to the National Churchill Museum in Fulton, Missouri (the town where Winston Churchill delivered his "Iron Curtain" speech in 1946), University of Missouri-Kansas City and, more exotically, the Churchill Archives Centre (yes folks, that’s the British spelling) in Cambridge, England.

I am far from a master researcher, but I have picked up some tips from others who’ve been on the road, and through sheer, exasperating trial and error. Here are a few of these:

1) Take a Digital Camera, Extra Battery, Tripod and Clicker Thingy

The days of me taking my crappy old Canon point-and-shoot camera, with its tiny lens that can’t take in a full legal size document even if I was suspended from the ceiling (think Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible) and manually adjusting the angle each time, are over. I’m going to invest in a "superzoom" model, tripod, extra battery and the clicker thingy that lets you take pics without touching the camera. I saw two guys using this technique recently and one told me that creating such a setup was the best advice a professor ever gave him. Bravo, prof! By using it, the guy avoided using the photocopier (you’re only allowed to photograph the first page of original, multi-page docs) and took each snap quickly, almost like he was some kind of hyper-efficient researching humanoid. Me? My POS Canon ran out of battery half way through, and I had to resort to reproducing multi-page letters through shorthand. Aaarrghhh! Never again.

2) Form a Relationship with an Archivist

I’m not suggesting a romantic dalliance, but rather a courteous professional exchange between the seeker of knowledge and the one who knows where it resides. If the archivist is on your side they can suggest boxes and folders (and sometimes even specific documents), pull these for you in advance so you can get going as soon as you arrive, and follow up with further suggestions later. Just don’t treat them like Google or act imperious, and do send follow up thank you notes and e-mails. Archivists are there to help respectful researchers, but they’re not part of a servant class. 

3) Avoid Rabbit Holes

This is a case of "do what I say, not what I do." Even going into an archive room with a tightly focused, organized wish list is no guarantee of a successful session. The trouble – or, at least, my trouble, is that every document, memo and letter is interesting in its own way. It’s all too easy to get sidetracked and look up at the clock to find you’ve burned an hour going down a fascinating yet completely useless path that in no way advances your project. Focus, I say, focus!

4) Process Your Materials ASAP

When you’ve worn your brain to a frazzle with several hours or, if you have a forgiving spouse/partner/whatever, days of intensely focused research, it’s tempting to throw your hard won materials in a box and forget about them for a few weeks. The problem with this is that even if you’ve taken solid notes and prioritized your harvest, you will forget certain intangibles and details that you’d recall if you knuckled down for a while and scanned and/or filed what you’ve found in the appropriate manner. Following the first two steps of an efficient research and writing process – capture and organize – in quick succession makes it easier to get to the third step – retrieve – in the best possible way. The same goes for online research and the use of tools such as Evernote, which I find most useful if I create folders and use tags/keywords.

5) Keep Your Research Away From Small Children

Let’s just say that you’ll only let your five-year-old and two-year-old get into your archival materials once. Hopefully they won’t tear, eat or throw away what they find. Research commandment # 5: Thou shalt lock thy office door at all times.